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POLITICS, 1835-1914

Parliamentary Representation

The two-member constituency, at first solidly Liberal
and still much influenced by the Grosvenors, was
riddled with bribery until 1880, votes being freely
bought for beer by both parties. There was a further
source of corruption. Although freemen retained their
parliamentary votes until 1918 and were a significant
proportion of the electorate before 1867, many were
too poor to qualify under the £10 householder franchise, and party agents on both sides paid admittance
fees and a day's wages when they took up the freedom.
There were almost 1,000 freemen voters in 1880 and
still over 700 in 1914. (fn. 1)

By abandoning their hotly disputed claim to both
seats in 1829, the Grosvenor family strengthened a
widely acknowledged right to one of them, which was
unchallenged by Liberal factions and Tories alike. (fn. 2)
Lord Robert Grosvenor sat from 1832 to 1847, when
he was replaced at an uncontested byelection by his
nephew Hugh, Earl Grosvenor. The latter remained
M.P. until he succeeded his father as marquess of
Westminster in 1869, when in another uncontested
byelection he was followed by his cousin Norman
Grosvenor. The family's first partner at Chester was
the lawyer John Jervis, knighted as attorney-general in
1846, who left the Commons in 1850. He was succeeded by W. O. Stanley, son of Lord Stanley of
Alderley, who sat until 1857, when he was replaced
by a local businessman, the Radical Enoch Salisbury. (fn. 3)
The Conservatives did not always bother to fight
Chester and when they did (in 1837, 1850, and
1857) they were beaten heavily, receiving only 350-
800 votes to the Liberals' 1,000-1,300 from an electorate which grew slowly from 2,000 in 1832 to 2,500 in
1865. The Chester Tories had a chance only when the
Liberals fell into disarray in 1859, Salisbury being
defeated for the second seat by a popular local man,
Philip Humberston, who had the support of Whigs
unwilling to give their second vote to a Radical. (fn. 4) A
worse Liberal split took place in 1865, when the Whig
and Radical factions each ran a candidate alongside
Earl Grosvenor. The Conservative, Chester-born H.C.
Raikes, nevertheless came fourth after vigorous interventions for the Whig, W. H. Gladstone, by his father,
the chancellor of the exchequer, against the normal
understanding that cabinet ministers did not campaign
outside their own constituencies. (fn. 5)

The 1867 Reform Act more than doubled the electorate to some 6,000, adding more natural Conservatives
than Liberals among the newly enfranchised working
men, though also boosting support for Earl Grosvenor.
Of the two candidates who stood in both 1865 and 1868
the earl put on 900 votes, but Raikes added 1,600. Again
in 1868 the second Liberal vote was divided between
Salisbury and a Whig, and Raikes got in. The Radical
vote had been falling as a share of the total: from 38 per
cent in 1857 to 28 per cent in 1859 and 1865 and only 21
per cent in 1868. Although in 1859 Salisbury drew some
support from across the social spectrum, more of his
voters were qualified as freemen than as £10 householders, and well over half were small shopkeepers,
tradesmen, and labourers. (fn. 6) In 1868 he made special
efforts to target Welsh-speaking electors, (fn. 7) but the new
votes of railway servants probably largely went to Raikes
in 1868, (fn. 8) and it is doubtful that any second Liberal
candidate could have beaten him. Raikes later claimed
that he failed to head the poll only because his party
agents were so fearful of the consequences for Chester of
displacing Earl Grosvenor that late in the day they
instructed their supporters not to plump for Raikes
but to give their second vote to the earl. (fn. 9)

Raikes also improved the party's organization in
Chester, using the existing Constitutional Society to
spawn a Constitutional Friendly Society in 1873 as a
front for channelling private funds into an annual treat
for Conservative supporters. In September 1879 the
Friendly Society sent some 2,287 trippers to the seaside
at Rhyl. (fn. 10) He was probably also behind the large and
successful branch of the Primrose League established in
the 1880s. (fn. 11)

The Grosvenors withdrew from the seat in 1874,
when the Liberal candidates were the senior party
politician J. G. Dodson and one of the local leaders,
Sir Thomas Frost, but in 1880 they came back,
partnering Dodson with the first duke of Westmin
ster's nephew Beilby Lawley. In 1874 Raikes, who was
building up a strong local following, cleverly chose to
run alone and won narrowly. (fn. 12) The local Liberal party
determined to organize better for the 1880 election
through a Liberal Association established in 1879; on
the model of those elsewhere, it comprised a large
representative (but nominal) ruling body, the '300',
and a small executive committee. Sir Thomas Frost was
its president, but the key figures were two of the vicepresidents, Enoch Salisbury and A. O. Walker, and
William Brown, who was chairman and treasurer of
the finance committee. (fn. 13)

Extensive treating and bribery were undertaken by
both parties in 1880 in a campaign also marked by
mob violence in the streets, directed especially against
an Independent candidate. Salisbury, Walker, and the
candidates resigned from the Liberal Association in
order to conduct it more discreetly. (fn. 14) The result of the
election was a comprehensive Liberal victory. (fn. 15) The
Conservatives immediately petitioned against the
result; after a short hearing in Chester had uncovered
much evidence of corruption, the M.P.s were
unseated and the matter was referred to a Royal
Commission which exonerated the candidates but
imposed a seven-year disqualification from voting
on 914 individuals who had given or received bribes
or treats. Chester was left unrepresented in parliament
until 1885. (fn. 16)

The redistribution of 1885 left Chester with one seat,
for which the electorate grew steadily from 6,300 to
8,100 by 1910. (fn. 17) National issues played an increasingly
important part in the city's parliamentary elections, (fn. 18)
especially the immediate matter of Irish Home Rule,
over which the duke of Westminster broke decisively
with Gladstone and the Liberal party. Both Gladstone
and the duke were influential in Chester, (fn. 19) and Home
Rule had many supporters in the city, (fn. 20) but Grosvenor's
weight may have been critical. In 1885 the LiberalRadical, an Anglo-Irish Home Ruler, beat the Conservative by 300 votes, (fn. 21) but the following year the
duke refused to endorse the new member, Walter
Foster, lent transport to the Conservatives during the
election, and made two powerful Unionist speeches in
Chester. (fn. 22) Partly as a result, the Conservative, Robert
Yerburgh, won by a narrow margin. Both Gladstone
and the Liberal leadership in the county bitterly
condemned the duke's 'interference', which they
believed had cost them the seat. (fn. 23) Chester was thereafter a relatively safe Conservative constituency: Yerburgh won it in 1892, 1895 (unopposed), and 1900,
and was defeated only in the Liberal landslide of 1906,
regaining and then holding it in the two elections of
1910. The number of Conservative voters grew from
2,400 in 1885 to almost 4,000 in the very high turnout of January 1910; the Liberals mustered 2,400-
2,700 in elections between 1885 and 1900 and
3,500-3,700 in 1906 and 1910.

Muncipal Politics

The Grosvenor family's direct influence over the
corporation was broken by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and the first council elections at the
end of the year. More revealing than the success of only
5 Tories against 35 Liberals (fn. 24) was the pattern of former
political allegiances. Twelve of the 40 had voted against
the Grosvenor candidates in the 1826 general election
and a further six had split their votes, which amounted
to the same thing. There were only six out-and-out
Grosvenor supporters. A large group, who had not
voted at all in 1826, had presumably been uncommitted in the earlier struggles. (fn. 25) They included some of
the larger businessmen new to the council, several of
whom served for many years, such as E. S. Walker of
the leadworks and the banker William Wardell. (fn. 26) There
were thus many new faces in the council chamber. The
only man with long service was the banker Thomas
Dixon, a councilman since 1811 and an alderman since
1827, who received the largest number of votes in any
of the wards and, with Walker, headed the new list of
aldermen. Another seven had entered the old corporation between 1823 and 1830, five of them in the
Grosvenor camp, though they only just secured their
places in 1835. They were balanced by five of the
Independents who had served as sheriff since 1822.
The first mayoral election was contested, and Dixon as
Grosvenor candidate lost to a former Independent, (fn. 27)
but was elected unopposed the following November.

There was initially a high turnover of councillors
and aldermen: of those elected to the first council only
16 still sat in 1841. (fn. 28) At no time was the council
dominated by a single economic interest. Rather it
represented the diverse sectors of the city's economy.
Professional men and the biggest shopkeepers and
merchants were always well to the fore, and became
more numerous by 1914; smaller retailers and craftsmen retained a presence; the drink trade was present
throughout; and there were normally a few large
manufacturers and industrialists. (fn. 29)

The size of the municipal electorate fluctuated from
year to year but in general grew with the rise in
population from 1,400-1,800 in the 1840s to 3,500-
4,000 in the 1860s, then leapt to over 6,400 when the
residency qualification was reduced to 12 months in
1869. Thereafter, as the population increased more
slowly, it crept up to 7,400 in 1914. Those figures
represented about 9 per cent of all inhabitants before
1869 and 18 per cent afterwards. (fn. 30) There were thus
considerably more municipal voters than parliamentary ones before 1867, but afterwards up to 1,000
fewer.

Even in the heightened party politics of the period
after 1880 only about half of ward elections were
contested, either because one party was impregnably
dominant or because the parties tacitly or openly
agreed to divide the representation. Byelections were
contested more often than the main November elections. The turn-out reached 76 per cent in the exceptional year of 1893, when all five wards were
contested. (fn. 31)

Party political divisions on the council mattered
little before the 1870s, (fn. 32) but local issues were often
highly contentious, personal rivalries were involved,
and corruption was extensive. By the 1850s election
managers, known locally as 'Bashi-Bazouks', were said
to be able to return any candidate for a price, mainly
by treating voters in the pubs. A later chief constable
attributed the corruptibility of the electorate in part to
widespread apathy about council elections. (fn. 33) Certainly
in 1856 it was evidently normal to bribe voters with
drink. (fn. 34) In the same decade a Whig caucus was based at
no. 86 Watergate Street, the premises of William
Shone, who as collector of the improvement rate
held the only complete list of ratepayers eligible to be
registered as burgess voters. (fn. 35)

The Whig caucus excluded the Radical wing of the
Liberal party, but Radical politics in Chester were
galvanized by the arrival of Enoch Salisbury in connexion with the new gas company in the early 1850s. A
self-made Welsh businessman and barrister and a
teetotal Congregationalist of advanced Radical views,
he was a contentious figure for over twenty years, both
in politics and in his business dealings. (fn. 36) A public split
between Whigs and Radicals seemed likely as early as
1852 but was averted apparently by a rallying call to
their common political principles. (fn. 37) In 1857, however,
Salisbury denounced the caucus, and went on to
disrupt the Liberal machine over the four general
elections to 1868, then briefly united the factions in
a short-lived Liberal Association (which he himself
called a 'dead-alive thing'), and finally joined the
council for the first time in 1873. (fn. 38)

In the meantime a variety of local issues which cut
across party and even factional lines had come and
gone. In the later 1830s and the 1840s, a time of
economic stagnation, there were bitter disputes over
whether the council should back those who wished to
bring new industries to the city. Most plans which
required the release of council-owned land were turned
down, with the exception of direct railway access, over
which a pro-railway lobby won the day. The chairman
of the Chester and Crewe Railway Co., John Uniacke,
who lived in Chester, was brought on to the council in
1838 and was immediately voted in as mayor, serving
for the crucial two years while the lines to Crewe and
Birkenhead were opened. Industrial development
faded as an issue as the local economy revived in the
1850s. (fn. 39) In the 1840s and 1850s the council was
instead preoccupied with stabilizing its finances,
extending its powers, and improving public health.
In the 1860s attention turned, still in a non-partisan
way, to street improvements and reforming the police
and fire brigade. (fn. 40) Cross-party co-operation among the
élite was exemplified by the establishment of the
Grosvenor Club in 1866, which drew its early membership from the leaders of both parties and indeed from
non-party figures; the first two presidents were the
Whig Earl Grosvenor and the former Tory M.P. Philip
Humberston. (fn. 41)

Other issues began to come to the fore in council
elections during the 1850s and 1860s. One of the
longest-lived was temperance, in the movement for
which a leading part was taken by William Farish, a
self-educated working man and former Chartist who
prospered in business after settling in Chester in 1850.
Chester's numerous and varied nonconformist chapels
provided a firm basis for the movement. Farish polled
100 votes as a temperance candidate in St. Oswald's
ward in 1856, and, after a publicity coup when the
mayor refused to hold a public temperance meeting, he
and a colleague defeated two liquor merchants in the
same ward in 1860. Unopposed in 1863 and 1866, and
sheriff in 1868-9, he was then harrassed by the drink
interests within his own party, who unsuccessfully ran
a brewer against him in 1869, prevented his election as
mayor in 1873, held him back from promotion to
alderman, and actively excluded him from the Chester
Liberal Association in 1879. Temperance had some
powerful friends, however, including the duke of
Westminster, and Farish served as mayor in 1877-8,
but attempts from 1876 to obtain pledges from voters
to support only temperance candidates were undone in
the beer-sodden election of 1880. (fn. 42) Temperance was
afterwards mostly overshadowed by party politics. (fn. 43) The
Irish voters of Boughton may have formed another
special interest group: the popular Tory W. H. Churton, who occupied one of the ward's seats 1871-80 and
1882-95 certainly credited his success in part to their
support. (fn. 44)

Most municipal elections were fought on party lines
after 1868, (fn. 45) but it was not until the 1880s that party
allegiance dominated the conduct of council business.
Many issues were already being decided on party lines
when Farish stood down from the council in 1881; on
returning in 1887 he found the chamber transformed
into a wholly party-political arena. (fn. 46) On some matters
of local importance, such as education after 1866, the
natural fault lines in any case lay between the parties, (fn. 47)
but other issues could still cut across them. Party
differences were laid aside in some wards in 1882,
for example, over the Improvement Bill: in Boughton
one Tory and one Liberal hostile to the Bill were
returned with much cross-party voting. (fn. 48)

The corrupt parliamentary election of 1880 also
affected municipal politics. Its immediate impact was
to boost the Liberals, who had a net gain of five seats in
the four wards contested in November that year. One
Liberal supporter boasted 'We've fought 'em with beer
and licked 'em, and now we've fought 'em without
beer and licked 'em. (fn. 49) The main issue now became the
domination of the mayoralty by William and Charles
Brown. (fn. 50) Their uncles had been prominent councillors
after 1835, and from the 1870s the huge success of
their department store gave them the leisure and the
money to secure great influence within the Liberal
party and the council. Both brothers were scheduled
for bribery at the 1880 election, but before the Royal
Commission reported, Charles was nominated as
mayor and beat off a challenge from a fellow Liberal
but a non-briber, nominated by the Tories. He was
mayor again for two terms in 1883-5 when no-one else
was willing to serve at a time of much pressing business
over the Improvement Bill and the abolition of the
bridge tolls. After only a year's interval William was
elected mayor in 1886, then re-elected the following
year in order to carry through the public library
extension, his gift to the town. Only two years passed
before Charles was again made mayor in 1890. Opposition to the brothers' 'perpetual mayordom' was not
limited to those with scruples about handing over the
office to men struck off the parliamentary register for
bribery. (fn. 51) Even the Liberal Chester Chronicle had misgivings. There was, moreover, unpleasant squabbling
in 1891 between Charles Brown as mayor and the
bishop and dean, and allegations in 1892 that he
wished to serve yet again because he hoped to be
knighted if still in office when the Royal Agricultural
Show came to Chester during the ensuing year. Particular resentment was voiced at the way that both
Charles and William had turned the mayoralty into
almost a full-time job and spent their own money
lavishly on public projects, making it difficult for men
with business or professional responsibilities, or less
money, to aspire to the position.

After the 1881 municipal elections the Liberals had
28 seats and the Tories 11, with 1 Independent. (fn. 52) More
important than the Browns as an influence on party
strength in the council was the secession of the Liberal
Unionists in 1886, which was led by the head of the
other great local dynasty, Sir Thomas Frost, partner
with his brothers in F. A. Frost and Sons, a highly
successful milling business. The Frost brothers had
already been mayor almost as often as the Browns,
Thomas being knighted when the prince of Wales
visited Chester to open the new town hall in 1869,
and serving a further two terms in 1881-3. (fn. 53) Among the
councillors the Unionist converts included George
Bird, perhaps the most prominent working-class Liberal, who when he came up for re-election in St. Mary's
ward in 1888 stood as a Liberal Unionist with full
Conservative support and beat two Liberals. By 1889
four aldermen and three councillors sat as Liberal
Unionists, but some of them never took the Tory
whip and in any case the Liberals at first still commanded a clear majority. (fn. 54) Feeling was heightened by
the public split between the duke of Westminster and
Gladstone and by rallies on both sides. (fn. 55)

The tide of council election results ran steadily
against the Liberals in the early 1890s. The only two
wards contested in 1890, for example, both saw a
prominent Liberal, William Farish in St. Oswald's
and the staunch Home Ruler Henry Stolterfoth in St.
Mary's, pushed into third place by new candidates,
closet Conservatives standing as Independents. (fn. 56) The
Conservatives and Unionists finally achieved a majority on the council in 1894, (fn. 57) which they reinforced in
1895 by purging two Liberal aldermen, also claiming a
majority on all the committees. (fn. 58)

Chester was the sort of town 'rich in strong-minded,
single, and affluent ladies' who pioneered women's
involvement in local politics in the late 19th century. (fn. 59)
After 1869, when women were allowed to vote in
municipal elections, (fn. 60) the temperance leader William
Farish made special efforts to cultivate their support,
and claimed in that year to have had the votes of 47 of
the 60 women on the electoral roll for his ward. (fn. 61) When
he sought to return to the council in 1887 he was
nominated solely by women voters, (fn. 62) who were especially numerous in his ward (St. Oswald's) and
Boughton. (fn. 63) Conservative women of the Primrose
League were active canvassers in the 1886 municipal
elections. (fn. 64) Women were voted on to the board of
guardians in the 1880s but the only woman who stood
for the council after it became possible in 1907 was
very poorly supported in Trinity ward in 1912. (fn. 65) The
new education committee co-opted the headmistress
of the Queen's school (Beatrice Clay) and the manager
of the Anglican public elementary schools' foundation
(Rachael Joyce) in 1904. (fn. 66)

There were only small beginnings for the Labour
movement in Chester before 1914. A branch of the
Independent Labour Party - apparently not a very
vigorous one - existed by 1896, (fn. 67) and the Chester
Socialist Society opened a meeting room between
1906 and 1910. (fn. 68) The United Trades and Labour
Council put up its secretary William Carr in St.
Oswald's ward at a byelection in 1894, on a platform
which included council housing, an eight-hour day for
corporation employees, electric lighting, and a new
public baths. He polled 466 votes to the Tory's 610. In
1900 he took second place in the ward as an overtly
Labour candidate, beating a sitting Liberal, and the
next year a colleague joined him in Boughton, both
men remaining on the council in 1914. (fn. 69)

At the other extreme of Chester's political spectrum
a Ratepayers' Association was formed soon before
1904 and lobbied against all increases in council
expenditure, whether on teachers' salaries, mayoral
expenses, subsidized rents for the handful of council
house tenants, or the employment of a lady sanitary
inspector; its secretary in 1904 was an estate agent,
Beresford Adams. (fn. 70)

The Fenian Plot of 1867

On 11 February 1867 an audacious plot by the Liverpool Fenians against Chester castle was put into
action. (fn. 71) The plan was to infiltrate Chester with up
to 2,000 men from all over the North of England under
the command of Irish American officers who had
military experience in the American Civil War, led by
John McCafferty. After night fell, the few armed with
revolvers were to seize 300 unguarded rifles stored for
the Volunteers at the old cockpit near the city walls.
The Fenians would then use those arms to storm the
castle, which was garrisoned by only 60 regular soldiers
of the 54th Regiment and where there were kept almost
10,000 rifles and 900,000 rounds of ammunition.
Other gangs of Fenians were to isolate the city by
cutting the telegraph wires and sabotaging railway
lines. The main force was to commandeer a train,
load the arms, and take them at gunpoint to Holyhead.
There they would hijack a steamer and head for
Wexford to raise rebellion in Ireland. Rumour, never
substantiated, added that the waterworks was to be
sabotaged, the town set on fire, and the shops looted.

The plan, however, was betrayed on the night of 10
February by a police informer among the leadership at
Liverpool, John Carr alias Corydon. When the Americans (Corydon among them) reached Chester the
following morning, they found that the authorities
had been forewarned by the Liverpool police. The
city's chief constable, the deputy mayor, the Volunteers' Major Philip Humberston, and the head constable of the county police had already moved the
Volunteers' rifles to the greater safety of the castle,
mustered the police, militia, and Volunteers, and
brought another 70 regular soldiers from Manchester.

Although the Fenian officers slipped out of Chester
and made frantic efforts to turn back their men, an
estimated 1,300 Fenians reached Chester by evening, in
small parties from Manchester, Preston, Halifax, Leeds,
and elsewhere. Overnight they abandoned what weapons they had and made off, but the emergency went on
through the night. Five hundred Household troops
arrived by train from London the next morning in
time for a tumultuous reception and breakfast at the
hotels. Only one arrest was made. The Manchester
Guardian joked that 'the excitement seemed to be
welcomed by many as an agreeable relief to the
oppressive monotony of ordinary Chester life', and
even in Chester it was the topic of satire. (fn. 72) It may have
fomented anti-Irish feeling in the city, even though
only a handful of the resident Irish population had
been involved in the plot, and certainly helped to turn
the duke of Westminster, who as lord lieutenant was
commander of the militia and Volunteers, against
granting Home Rule. (fn. 73)